Merle Oberon

Actor

Female

BornFeb 19, 1911

HometownMumbai

DiedNov 23, 1979

Death PlaceMalibu, California

Height5' 2" (157 cm)

NationalityIndian

Other NamesThompson, Estelle...

Merle Oberon was an Indian-born British actress best known for her screen performances in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) and The Cowboy and the Lady (1938). She began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). She travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935).… Read More

News + Updates

'VENICE — At least two of the top billings at the Venice Film Festival this year are calculated to scare the living daylights out of us: Abel Ferrara ’s in-competition “4:44 Last Day on Earth” and Steven Soderbergh ’s out-of-competition “Contagion” promise to give us a glimpse of the end-of-the-world lurking'

'The Cowboy and The Lady (Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon) from 1936, all James Bond, El Dorado, Winchester '73, Thunder Road, and the first True Grit. Anything with the Duke! Anything Louis L'Amour wrote, but even the Bible beats those!'

'She will share honors with actress Merle Oberon, blues singer Ella Logan and Bob "Bazooka" Burns. Miss Clara Schneider, chairman for the art department for the Tri-State Fair, is in Chicago in the interests of the fair's art exhibit'

'He was a well-established DP, he was married to a movie star [Merle Oberon], he dressed impeccably, came on the set as a typical Hollywood character.” Their disparate personalities and personas never gelled. “Stanley on the other hand was from New York'

Timeline

CHILDHOOD

1911Birth
Born on February 19, 1911.

TEENAGE

192817 Years Old
Oberon arrived in England for the first time in 1928, aged 17.
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Initially she worked as a club hostess under the name Queenie O'Brien and played in minor and unbilled roles in various films. "I couldn't dance or sing or write or paint. The only possible opening seemed to be in some line in which I could use my face. Read Less

192918 Years Old
In 1929, Merle met a former actor named Colonel Ben Finney at Firpo's, and dated him.
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However, when he saw Oberon's dark-skinned mother one night at her flat, and realised Oberon was mixed-race, he decided to end the relationship. However, Finney promised to introduce her to Rex Ingram of Victorine Studios, if she was prepared to travel to France. which she readily did. After packing all their belongings and moving to France, Oberon and her mother found that their supposed benefactor avoided them, although he had left a good word for Oberon with Ingram at the studios in Nice. Ingram liked Oberon's exotic appearance and quickly hired her to be an extra in a party scene in a film named The Three Passions. Read Less

TWENTIES

193928 Years Old
This was, in fact, no better than a hundred other faces, but it did possess a fortunately photogenic quality," she modestly told a journalist at Film Weekly in 1939.
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In view of the information discovered since this 1939 article (see preceding section) this should be seen as part of a myth perpetrated by Oberon, since apparently she did not reach Europe until 1929.<br /><br /> Her film career received a major boost when the director Alexander Korda took an interest and gave her a small but prominent role, under the name Merle Oberon, as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) opposite Charles Laughton. The film became a major success and she was then given leading roles, such as Lady Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, who became her lover for a while.<br /><br /> Oberon's career benefited from her relationship, and later marriage, to Korda. He sold "shares" of her contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn, who gave her good vehicles in Hollywood. Her "mother" stayed behind in England. Oberon earned her sole Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for The Dark Angel (1935) produced by Goldwyn. Around this time she had a serious romance with David Niven, and according to his authorized biography, even wanted to marry him, but he wasn't faithful to her. Read Less

194029 Years Old
According to Princess Merle, the biography written by Charles Higham with Roy Moseley, Oberon suffered even further damage to her complexion in 1940 from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs.
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Alexander Korda sent her to a skin specialist in New York City, where she underwent several dermabrasion procedures. The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, one could see noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin.<br /><br /> Charlotte died in 1937. In 1949 Oberon commissioned paintings of her mother from an old photograph. Read Less

THIRTIES

194130 Years Old
Merle Oberon had a brief affair in 1941 with Richard Hillary, an RAF fighter pilot who had been badly burned in the Battle of Britain.
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They met while he was on a good-will tour of the United States. He later became well known as the author of a best-selling book, The Last Enemy. Read Less

194231 Years Old
Merle Oberon became Lady Korda when her husband was knighted in 1942.
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At the time, the couple were based at Hills House in Denham, England. Read Less

194534 Years Old
She divorced him in 1945, to marry cinematographer Lucien Ballard.
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Ballard devised a special camera light for her to eliminate her facial scars on film. The light became known as the "Obie".<br /><br /> She married twice more, to Italian-born industrialist, Bruno Pagliai (with whom she adopted two children; they lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico) and Dutch actor Robert Wolders - later companion to actresses Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron – before her retirement in Malibu, California, where she died, aged 68, after suffering a stroke. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.<br /><br /> Merle Oberon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard) for her contributions to Motion Pictures.<br /><br /> Michael Korda, nephew of Alexander Korda, wrote a roman à clef about Oberon after her death entitled Queenie. This was also turned into a television miniseries starring Mia Sara. Read Less

FIFTIES

196554 Years Old
Oberon is known to have been to Australia only twice. Her first visit was in 1965, on a film promotion.
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Although a visit to Hobart was scheduled, she became ill after journalists in Sydney pressed her for details of her early life, and she left for Mexico shortly afterwards. Read Less

LATE ADULTHOOD

197867 Years Old
In 1978, the year before her death, she agreed to visit Hobart for a Lord Mayoral reception.
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The Lord Mayor of Hobart became aware shortly before the reception that there was no proof she had been born in Tasmania, but went ahead with the reception to save face. However, shortly after arriving at the reception, Oberon denied she had been born in Tasmania, to the disappointment of many. She then excused herself, claiming illness; whether ill or not, this meant she was unavailable to answer any more questions about her background. On the way to the reception, she had told her driver that as a child she was on a ship with her father, who became ill when it was passing Hobart. They were taken ashore so he could be treated, and as a result she spent some of her early years on the island. This story, too, seems to have been a fabrication. During her Hobart stay, she remained in her hotel, gave no other interviews, and did not visit the theatre named in her honour. Read Less

197969 Years Old
The paintings hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.